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aristocracy of the neighbourhood to laughter or to disgust. AtLichfield, however, Johnson could find no way of earning alivelihood. He became usher of a grammar school inLeicestershire; he resided as a humble companion in the house ofa country gentleman; but a life of dependence was insupportableto his haughty spirit. He repaired to Birmingham, and thereearned a few guineas by literary drudgery. In that town heprinted a translation, little noticed at the time, and longforgotten, of a Latin book about Abyssinia. He then put forthproposals for publishing by subscription the poems of Politian,with notes containing a history of modern Latin verse: butsubscriptions did not come in; and the volume never appeared.

While leading this vagrant and miserable life, Johnson fell inlove. The object of his passion was Mrs Elizabeth Porter, awidow who had children as old as himself. To ordinaryspectators, the lady appeared to be a short, fat, coarse woman,painted half an inch thick, dressed in gaudy colours, and fond ofexhibiting provincial airs and graces which were not exactlythose of the Queensberrys and Lepels. To Johnson, however, whosepassions were strong, whose eyesight was too weak to distinguishceruse from natural bloom, and who had seldom or never been inthe same room with a woman of real fashion, his Titty, as hecalled her, was the most beautiful, graceful, and accomplished ofher sex. That his admiration was unfeigned cannot be doubted;for she was as poor as himself. She accepted, with a readinesswhich did her little honour, the addresses of a suitor who mighthave been her son. The marriage, however, in spite of occasionalwranglings, proved happier than might have been expected. Thelover continued to be under the illusions of the wedding-day tillthe lady died in her sixty-fourth year. On her monument heplaced an inscription extolling the charms of her person and ofher manners; and when, long after her decease, he had occasion tomention her, he exclaimed, with a tenderness half ludicrous, halfpathetic, "Pretty creature!"

His marriage made it necessary for him to exert himself morestrenuously than he had hitherto done. He took a house in theneighbourhood of his native town, and advertised for pupils. Buteighteen months passed away; and only three pupils came to hisacademy. Indeed, his appearance was so strange, and his temperso violent, that his schoolroom must have resembled an ogre'sden. Nor was the tawdry painted grandmother whom he called hisTitty well qualified to make provision for the comfort of younggentlemen. David Garrick, who was one of the pupils, used, manyyears later, to throw the best company of London into convulsionsof laughter by mimicking the endearments of this extraordinarypair.

At length Johnson, in the twenty-eighth year of his age,determined to seek his fortune in the capital as a literaryadventurer. He set out with a few guineas, three acts of thetragedy of Irene in manuscript, and two or three letters ofintroduction from his friend Walmesley.

Never, since literature became a calling in England, had it beena less gainful calling than at the time when Johnson took up hisresidence in London. In the preceding generation a writer ofeminent merit was sure to be munificently rewarded by thegovernment. The least that he could expect was a pension or asinecure place; and, if he showed any aptitude for politics, hemight hope to be a member of parliament, a lord of the treasury,an ambassador, a secretary of state. It would be easy, on theother hand, to name several writers of the nineteenth century ofwhom the least successful has received forty thousand pounds fromthe booksellers. But Johnson entered on his vocation in the mostdreary part of the dreary interval which separated two ages ofprosperity. Literature had ceased to flourish under thepatronage of the great, and had not begun to flourish under thepatronage of the public. One man of letters, indeed, Pope, hadacquired by his pen what was then considered as a handsomefortune, and lived on a footing of equality with nobles andministers of state. But this was a solitary exception. Even anauthor whose reputation was established, and whose works werepopular, such an author as Thomson, whose Seasons were in everylibrary, such an author as Fielding, whose Pasquin had had agreater run than any drama since The Beggar's Opera, wassometimes glad to obtain, by pawning his best coat, the means ofdining on tripe at a cookshop underground, where he could wipehis hands, after his greasy meal, on the back of a Newfoundlanddog. It is easy, therefore, to imagine what humiliations andprivations must have awaited the novice who had still to earn aname. One of the publishers to whom Johnson applied foremployment measured with a scornful eye that athletic thoughuncouth frame, and exclaimed, "You had better get a porter'sknot, and carry trunks." Nor was the advice bad; for a porterwas likely to be as plentifully fed, and as comfortably lodged,as a poet.

Some time appears to have elapsed before Johnson was able to formany literary connection from which he could expect more thanbread for the day which was passing over him. He never forgotthe generosity with which Hervey, who was now residing in London,relieved his wants during this time of trial. "Harry Hervey,"said the old philosopher many years later, "was a vicious man;but he was very kind to me. If you call a dog Hervey I shalllove him." At Hervey's table Johnson sometimes enjoyed feastswhich were made more agreeable by contrast. But in general hedined, and thought that he dined well, on sixpenny worth of meat,and a pennyworth of bread, at an alehouse near Drury Lane.

The effect of the privations and sufferings which he endured atthis time was discernible to the last in his temper and hisdeportment. His manners had never been courtly. They now becamealmost savage. Being frequently under the necessity of wearingshabby coats and dirty shirts, he became a confirmed sloven. Being often very hungry when he sat down to his meals, hecontracted a habit of eating with ravenous greediness. Even tothe end of his life, and even at the tables of the great, thesight of food affected him as it affects wild beasts and birds ofprey. His taste in cookery, formed in subterranean ordinariesand alamode beefshops, was far from delicate. Whenever he was sofortunate as to have near him a hare that had been kept too long,or a meat pie made with rancid butter, he gorged himself withsuch violence that his veins swelled, and the moisture broke outon his forehead. The affronts which his poverty emboldenedstupid and low-minded men to offer to him would have broken amean spirit into sycophancy, but made him rude even to ferocity. Unhappily the insolence which, while it was defensive, waspardonable, and in some sense respectable, accompanied him intosocieties where he was treated with courtesy and kindness. Hewas repeatedly provoked into striking those who had takenliberties with him. All the sufferers, however, were wise enoughto abstain from talking about their beatings, except Osborne, themost rapacious and brutal of booksellers, who proclaimedeverywhere that he had been knocked down by the huge fellow whomhe had hired to puff the Harleian Library.

About a year after Johnson had begun to reside in London, he wasfortunate enough to obtain regular employment from Cave, anenterprising and intelligent bookseller, who was proprietor andeditor of the "Gentleman's Magazine." That journal, justentering on the ninth year of its long existence, was the onlyperiodical work in the kingdom which then had what would now becalled a large circulation. It was, indeed, the chief source ofparliamentary intelligence. It was not then safe, even during arecess, to publish an account of the proceedings of either Housewithout some disguise. Cave, however, ventured to entertain hisreaders with what he called "Reports of the Debates of the Senateof Lilliput." France was Blefuscu; London was Mildendo: poundswere sprugs: the Duke of Newcastle was the Nardac secretary ofState: Lord Hardwicke was the Hurgo Hickrad: and WilliamPulteney was Wingul Pulnub. To write the speeches was, duringseveral years, the business of Johnson. He was generallyfurnished with notes, meagre indeed, and inaccurate, of what hadbeen said; but sometimes he had to find arguments and eloquenceboth for the ministry and for the opposition. He was himself aTory, not from rational conviction--for his serious opinion wasthat one form of government was just as good or as bad asanother--but from mere passion, such as inflamed the Capuletsagainst the Montagues, or the Blues of the Roman circus againstthe Greens. In his infancy he had heard so much talk about thevillanies of the Whigs, and the dangers of the Church, that hehad become a furious partisan when he could scarcely speak. Before he was three he had insisted on being taken to hearSacheverell preach at Lichfield Cathedral, and had listened tothe sermon with as much respect, and probably with as muchintelligence, as any Staffordshire squire in the congregation. The work which had been begun in the nursery had been completedby the university. Oxford, when Johnson resided there, was themost Jacobitical place in England; and Pembroke was one of themost Jacobital colleges in Oxford. The prejudices which hebrought up to London were scarcely less absurd than those of hisown Tom Tempest. Charles II. and James II. were two of the bestkings that ever reigned. Laud, a poor creature who never did,said, or wrote anything indicating more than the ordinarycapacity of an old woman, was a prodigy of parts and learningover whose tomb Art and Genius still continued to weep. Hampdendeserved no more honourable name than that of "the zealot ofrebellion." Even the ship money, condemned not less decidedly byFalkland and Clarendon than by the bitterest Roundheads, Johnsonwould not pronounce to have been an unconstitutional impost. Under a government, the mildest that had ever been known in theworld--under a government, which allowed to the people anunprecedented liberty of speech and action--he fancied that hewas a slave; he assailed the ministry with obloquy which refuteditself, and regretted the lost freedom and happiness of thosegolden days in which a writer who had taken but one-tenth part ofthe license allowed to him would have been pilloried, mangledwith the shears, whipped at the cart's tail, and flung into anoisome dungeon to die. He hated dissenters and stockjobbers,the excise and the army, septennial parliaments, and continentalconnections. He long had an aversion to the Scotch, an aversionof which he could not remember the commencement, but which, heowned, had probably originated in his abhorrence of the conductof the nation during the Great Rebellion. It is easy to guess inwhat manner debates on great party questions were likely to bereported by a man whose judgment was so much disordered by partyspirit. A show of fairness was indeed necessary to theprosperity of the Magazine. But Johnson long afterwards ownedthat, though he had saved appearances, he had taken care that theWhig dogs should not have the best of it; and, in fact, everypassage which has lived, every passage which bears the marks ofhis higher faculties, is put into the mouth of some member of theopposition.

A few weeks after Johnson had entered on these obscure labours,he published a work which at once placed him high among thewriters of his age. It is probable that what he had sufferedduring his first year in London had often reminded him of someparts of that noble poem in which Juvenal had described themisery and degradation of a needy man of letters, lodged amongthe pigeons' nests in the tottering garrets which overhung thestreets of Rome. Pope's admirable imitations of Horace's Satiresand Epistles had recently appeared, were in every hand, and wereby many readers thought superior to the originals. What Pope haddone for Horace, Johnson aspired to do for Juvenal. Theenterprise was bold and yet judicious. For between Johnson andJuvenal there was much in common, much more certainly thanbetween Pope and Horace.

Johnson's London appeared without his name in May 1738. Hereceived only ten guineas for this stately and vigorous poem; butthe sale was rapid, and the success complete. A second editionwas required within a week. Those small critics who are alwaysdesirous to lower established reputations ran about proclaimingthat the anonymous satirist was superior to Pope in Pope's ownpeculiar department of literature. It ought to be remembered, tothe honour of Pope, that he joined heartily in the applause withwhich the appearance of a rival genius was welcomed. He madeinquiries about the author of London. Such a man, he said, couldnot long be concealed. The name was soon discovered; and Popewith great kindness, exerted himself to obtain an academicaldegree and the mastership of a grammar school for the poor youngpoet. The attempt failed; and Johnson remained a bookseller'shack.

It does not appear that these two men, the most eminent writer ofthe generation which was going out, and the most eminent writerof the generation which was coming in, ever saw each other. Theylived in very different circles, one surrounded by dukes andearls, the other by starving pamphleteers and index makers. Among Johnson's associates at this time may be mentioned Boyse,who, when his shirts were pledged, scrawled Latin verses sittingup in bed with his arms through two holes in his blanket; whocomposed very respectable sacred poetry when he was sober; andwho was at last run over by a hackney coach when he was drunk: Hoole, surnamed the metaphysical tailor, who, instead ofattending to his measures, used to trace geometrical diagrams onthe board where he sate cross-legged; and the penitent impostor,George Psalmanazar, who, after poring all day, in a humblelodging, on the folios of Jewish rabbis and Christian fathers,indulged himself at night with literary and theologicalconversation at an alehouse in the city. But the most remarkableof the persons with whom at this time Johnson consorted wasRichard Savage, an earl's son, a shoemaker's apprentice, who hadseen life in all its forms, who had feasted among blue ribands inSaint James's Square, and had lain with fifty-pounds' weight ofiron on his legs in the condemned ward of Newgate. This man had,after many vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last into abject andhopeless poverty. His pen had failed him. His patrons had beentaken away by death, or estranged by the riotous profusion withwhich he squandered their bounty, and the ungrateful insolencewith which he rejected their advice. He now lived by begging. He dined on venison and champagne whenever he had been sofortunate as to borrow a guinea. If his questing had beenunsuccessful, he appeased the rage of hunger with some scraps ofbroken meat, and lay down to rest under the Piazza of CoventGarden in warm weather, and, in cold weather, as near as he couldget to the furnace of a glass house. Yet, in his misery, he wasstill an agreeable companion. He had an inexhaustible store ofanecdotes about that gay and brilliant world from which he wasnow an outcast. He had observed the great men of both parties inhours of careless relaxation, had seen the leaders of oppositionwithout the mask of patriotism, and had heard the prime ministerroar with laughter and tell stories not over decent. During somemonths Savage lived in the closest familiarity with Johnson; andthen the friends parted, not without tears. Johnson remained inLondon to drudge for Cave. Savage went to the West of England,lived there as he had lived everywhere, and in 1743, died,penniless and heart-broken, in Bristol gaol.

Soon after his death, while the public curiosity was stronglyexcited about his extraordinary character, and his not lessextraordinary adventures, a life of him appeared widely differentfrom the catchpenny lives of eminent men which were then a staplearticle of manufacture in Grub Street. The style was indeeddeficient in ease and variety; and the writer was evidently toopartial to the Latin element of our language. But the littlework, with all its faults, was a masterpiece. No finer specimenof literary biography existed in any language, living or dead;and a discerning critic might have confidently predicted that theauthor was destined to be the founder of a new school of Englisheloquence.

The life of Savage was anonymous; but it was well known inliterary circles that Johnson was the writer. During the threeyears which followed, he produced no important work, but he wasnot, and indeed could not be, idle. The fame of his abilitiesand learning continued to grow. Warburton pronounced him a manof parts and genius; and the praise of Warburton was then nolight thing. Such was Johnson's reputation that, in 1747,several eminent booksellers combined to employ him in the arduouswork of preparing a Dictionary of the English language, in twofolio volumes. The sum which they agreed to pay him was onlyfifteen hundred guineas; and out of this sum he had to payseveral poor men of letters who assisted him in the humbler partsof his task.

The prospectus of the Dictionary he addressed to the Earl ofChesterfield. Chesterfield had long been celebrated for thepoliteness of his manners, the brilliancy of his wit, and thedelicacy of his taste. He was acknowledged to be the finestspeaker in the House of Lords. He had recently governed Ireland,at a momentous conjuncture, with eminent firmness, wisdom, andhumanity; and he had since become Secretary of State. Hereceived Johnson's homage with the most winning affability, andrequited it with a few guineas, bestowed doubtless in a verygraceful manner, but was by no means desirous to see all hiscarpets blackened with the London mud, and his soups and winesthrown to right and left over the gowns of fine ladies and thewaistcoats of fine gentlemen, by an absent, awkward scholar, whogave strange starts and uttered strange growls, who dressed likea scarecrow, and ate like a cormorant. During some time Johnsoncontinued to call on his patron, but after being repeatedly toldby the porter that his lordship was not at home, took the hint,and ceased to present himself at the inhospitable door.

Johnson had flattered himself that he should have completed hisDictionary by the end of 1750; but it was not till 1755 that heat length gave his huge volumes to the world. During the sevenyears which he passed in the drudgery of penning definitions andmaking quotations for transcription, he sought for relaxation inliterary labour of a more agreeable kind. In 1749 he publishedthe Vanity of Human Wishes, an excellent imitation of the TenthSatire of Juvenal. It is in truth not easy to say whether thepalm belongs to the ancient or to the modern poet. The coupletsin which the fall of Wolsey is described, though lofty andsonorous, are feeble when compared with the wonderful lines whichbring before us all Rome in tumult on the day of the fall ofSejanus, the laurels on the doorposts, the white bull stalkingtowards the Capitol, the statues rolling down from theirpedestals, the flatterers of the disgraced minister running tosee him dragged with a hook through the streets, and to have akick at his carcase before it is hurled into the Tiber. It mustbe owned too that in the concluding passage the Christianmoralist has not made the most of his advantages, and has fallendecidedly short of the sublimity of his Pagan model. On theother hand, Juvenal's Hannibal must yield to Johnson's Charles;and Johnson's vigorous and pathetic enumeration of the miseriesof a literary life must be allowed to be superior to Juvenal'slamentation over the fate of Demosthenes and Cicero.

For the copyright of the Vanity of Human Wishes Johnson receivedonly fifteen guineas.

A few days after the publication of this poem, his tragedy, begunmany years before, was brought on the stage. His pupil, DavidGarrick, had, in 1741, made his appearance on a humble stage inGoodman's Fields, had at once risen to the first place amongactors, and was now, after several years of almost uninterruptedsuccess, manager of Drury Lane Theatre. The relation between himand his old preceptor was of a very singular kind. They repelledeach other strongly, and yet attracted each other strongly. Nature had made them of very different clay; and circumstanceshad fully brought out the natural peculiarities of both. Suddenprosperity had turned Garrick's head. Continued adversity hadsoured Johnson's temper. Johnson saw with more envy than becameso great a man the villa, the plate, the china, the Brusselscarpet, which the little mimic had got by repeating, withgrimaces and gesticulations, what wiser men had written; and theexquisitely sensitive vanity of Garrick was galled by the thoughtthat, while all the rest of the world was applauding him, hecould obtain from one morose cynic, whose opinion it wasimpossible to despise, scarcely any compliment not acidulatedwith scorn. Yet the two Lichfield men had so many earlyrecollections in common, and sympathised with each other on somany points on which they sympathised with nobody else in thevast population of the capital, that, though the master was oftenprovoked by the monkey-like impertinence of the pupil, and thepupil by the bearish rudeness of the master, they remainedfriends till they were parted by death. Garrick now broughtIrene out, with alterations sufficient to displease the author,yet not sufficient to make the piece pleasing to the audience. The public, however, listened with little emotion, but with muchcivility, to five acts of monotonous declamation. After ninerepresentations the play was withdrawn. It is, indeed,altogether unsuited to the stage, and, even when perused in thecloset, will be found hardly worthy of the author. He had notthe slightest notion of what blank verse should be. A change inthe last syllable of every other line would make theversification of the Vanity of Human Wishes closely resemble theversification of Irene. The poet, however, cleared, by hisbenefit nights, and by the sale of the copyright of his tragedy,about three hundred pounds, then a great sum in his estimation.

About a year after the representation of Irene, he began topublish a series of short essays on morals, manners, andliterature. This species of composition had been brought intofashion by the success of the Tatler, and by the still morebrilliant success of the Spectator. A crowd of small writers hadvainly attempted to rival Addison. The Lay Monastery, theCensor, the Freethinker, the Plain Dealer, the Champion, andother works of the same kind, had had their short day. None ofthem had obtained a permanent place in our literature; and theyare now to be found only in the libraries of the curious. Atlength Johnson undertook the adventure in which so many aspirantshad failed. In the thirty-sixth year after the appearance of thelast number of the Spectator appeared the first number of theRambler. From March 1750 to March 1752 this paper continued tocome out every Tuesday and Saturday.

From the first the Rambler was enthusiastically admired by a feweminent men. Richardson, when only five numbers had appeared,pronounced it equal, if not superior, to the Spectator. Youngand Hartley expressed their approbation not less warmly. BubbDoddington, among whose many faults indifference to the claims ofgenius and learning cannot be reckoned, solicited theacquaintance of the writer. In consequence probably of the goodoffices of Doddington, who was then the confidential adviser ofPrince Frederic, two of his Royal Highness's gentlemen carried agracious message to the printing office, and ordered seven copiesfor Leicester House. But these overtures seem to have been verycoldly received. Johnson had had enough of the patronage of thegreat to last him all his life, and was not disposed to haunt anyother door as he had haunted the door of Chesterfield.

By the public the Rambler was at first very coldly received. Though the price of a number was only twopence, the sale did notamount to five hundred. The profits were therefore very small. But as soon as the flying leaves were collected and reprintedthey became popular. The author lived to see thirteen thousandcopies spread over England alone. Separate editions werepublished for the Scotch and Irish markets. A large partypronounced the style perfect, so absolutely perfect that in someessays it would be impossible for the writer himself to alter asingle word for the better. Another party, not less numerous,vehemently accused him of having corrupted the purity of theEnglish tongue. The best critics admitted that his diction wastoo monotonous, too obviously artificial, and now and then turgideven to absurdity. But they did justice to the acuteness of hisobservations on morals and manners, to the constant precision andfrequent brilliancy of his language, to the weighty andmagnificent eloquence of many serious passages, and to the solemnyet pleasing humour of some of the lighter papers. On thequestion of precedence between Addison and Johnson, a questionwhich, seventy years ago, was much disputed, posterity haspronounced a decision from which there is no appeal. Sir Roger,his chaplain and his butler, Will Wimble and Will Honeycomb, theVision of Mirza, the Journal of the Retired Citizen, theEverlasting Club, the Dunmow Flitch, the Loves of Hilpah andShalum, the Visit to the Exchange, and the Visit to the Abbey,are known to everybody. But many men and women, even of highlycultivated minds, are unacquainted with Squire Bluster and MrsBusy, Quisquilius and Venustulus, the Allegory of Wit andLearning, the Chronicle of the Revolutions of a Garret, and thesad fate of Aningait and Ajut.

The last Rambler was written in a sad and gloomy hour. MrsJohnson had been given over by the physicians. Three days latershe died. She left her husband almost broken-hearted. Manypeople had been surprised to see a man of his genius and learningstooping to every drudgery, and denying himself almost everycomfort, for the purpose of supplying a silly, affected old womanwith superfluities, which she accepted with but little gratitude. But all his affection had been concentrated on her. He hadneither brother nor sister, neither son nor daughter. To him shewas beautiful as the Gunnings, and witty as Lady Mary. Heropinion of his writings was more important to him than the voiceof the pit of Drury Lane Theatre or the judgment of the MonthlyReview. The chief support which had sustained him through themost arduous labour of his life was the hope that she would enjoythe fame and the profit which he anticipated from his Dictionary. She was gone; and in that vast labyrinth of streets, peopled byeight hundred thousand human beings, he was alone. Yet it wasnecessary for him to set himself, as he expressed it, doggedly towork. After three more laborious years, the Dictionary was atlength complete.

It had been generally supposed that this great work would bededicated to the eloquent and accomplished nobleman to whom theprospectus had been addressed. He well knew the value of such acompliment; and therefore, when the day of publication drew near,he exerted himself to soothe, by a show of zealous and at thesame time of delicate and judicious kindness, the pride which hehad so cruelly wounded. Since the Ramblers had ceased to appear,the town had been entertained by a journal called the World, towhich many men of high rank and fashion contributed. In twosuccessive numbers of the World the Dictionary was, to use themodern phrase, puffed with wonderful skill. The writings ofJohnson were warmly praised. It was proposed that he should beinvested with the authority of a Dictator, nay, of a Pope, overour language, and that his decisions about the meaning and thespelling of words should be received as final. His two folios,it was said, would of course be bought by everybody who couldafford to buy them. It was soon known that these papers werewritten by Chesterfield. But the just resentment of Johnson wasnot to be so appeased. In a letter written with singular energyand dignity of thought and language, he repelled the tardyadvances of his patron. The Dictionary came forth without adedication. In the preface the author truly declared that heowed nothing to the great, and described the difficulties withwhich he had been left to struggle so forcibly and patheticallythat the ablest and most malevolent of all the enemies of hisfame, Horne Tooke, never could read that passage without tears.

The public, on this occasion, did Johnson full justice, andsomething more than justice. The best lexicographer may well becontent if his productions are received by the world with coldesteem. But Johnson's Dictionary was hailed with an enthusiasmsuch as no similar work has ever excited. It was indeed thefirst dictionary which could be read with pleasure. Thedefinitions show so much acuteness of thought and command oflanguage, and the passages quoted from poets, divines, andphilosophers are so skilfully selected, that a leisure hour mayalways be very agreeably spent in turning over the pages. Thefaults of the book resolve themselves, for the most part, intoone great fault. Johnson was a wretched etymologist. He knewlittle or nothing of any Teutonic language except English, whichindeed, as he wrote it, was scarcely a Teutonic language; andthus he was absolutely at the mercy of Junius and Skinner.

The Dictionary, though it raised Johnson's fame, added nothing tohis pecuniary means. The fifteen hundred guineas which thebooksellers had agreed to pay him had been advanced and spentbefore the last sheets issued from the press. It is painful torelate that, twice in the course of the year which followed thepublication of this great work, he was arrested and carried tospunging-houses, and that he was twice indebted for his libertyto his excellent friend Richardson. It was still necessary forthe man who had been formally saluted by the highest authority asDictator of the English language to supply his wants by constanttoil. He abridged his Dictionary. He proposed to bring out anedition of Shakspeare by subscription; and many subscribers sentin their names and laid down their money; but he soon found thetask so little to his taste that he turned to more attractiveemployments. He contributed many papers to a new monthlyjournal, which was called the Literary Magazine. Few of thesepapers have much interest; but among them was the very best thingthat he ever wrote, a masterpiece both of reasoning and ofsatirical pleasantry, the review of Jenyn's Inquiry into theNature and Origin of Evil.

In the spring of 1758 Johnson put forth the first of a series ofessays, entitled the Idler. During two years these essayscontinued to appear weekly. They were eagerly read, widelycirculated, and indeed, impudently pirated, while they were stillin the original form, and had a large sale when collected intovolumes. The Idler may be described as a second part of theRambler, somewhat livelier and somewhat weaker than the firstpart.

While Johnson was busied with his Idlers, his mother, who hadaccomplished her ninetieth year, died at Lichfield. It was longsince he had seen her; but he had not failed to contributelargely, out of his small means, to her comfort. In order todefray the charges of her funeral, and to pay some debts whichshe had left, he wrote a little book in a single week, and sentoff the sheets to the press without reading them over. A hundredpounds were paid him for the copyright; and the purchasers hadgreat cause to be pleased with their bargain; for the book wasRasselas.

The success of Rasselas was great, though such ladies as MissLydia Languish must have been grievously disappointed when theyfound that the new volume from the circulating library was littlemore than a dissertation on the author's favourite theme, theVanity of Human Wishes; that the Prince of Abyssinia was withouta mistress, and the princess without a lover; and that the storyset the hero and the heroine down exactly where it had taken themup. The style was the subject of much eager controversy. TheMonthly Review and the Critical Review took different sides. Many readers pronounced the writer a pompous pedant, who wouldnever use a word of two syllables where it was possible to use aword of six, and who could not make a waiting woman relate heradventures without balancing every noun with another noun, andevery epithet with another epithet. Another party, not lesszealous, cited with delight numerous passages in which weightymeaning was expressed with accuracy and illustrated withsplendour. And both the censure and the praise were merited.

About the plan of Rasselas little was said by the critics; andyet the faults of the plan might seem to invite severe criticism. Johnson has frequently blamed Shakspeare for neglecting theproprieties of time and place, and for ascribing to one age ornation the manners and opinions of another. Yet Shakspeare hasnot sinned in this way more grievously than Johnson. Rasselasand Imlac, Nekayah and Pekuah, are evidently meant to beAbyssinians of the eighteenth century: for the Europe whichImlac describes is the Europe of the eighteenth century; and theinmates of the Happy Valley talk familiarly of that law ofgravitation which Newton discovered, and which was not fullyreceived even at Cambridge till the eighteenth century. What areal company of Abyssinians would have been may be learned fromBruce's Travels. But Johnson, not content with turning filthysavages, ignorant of their letters, and gorged with raw steakscut from living cows, into philosophers as eloquent andenlightened as himself or his friend Burke, and into ladies ashighly accomplished as Mrs Lennox or Mrs Sheridan, transferredthe whole domestic system of England to Egypt. Into a land ofharems, a land of polygamy, a land where women are marriedwithout ever being seen, he introduced the flirtations andjealousies of our ball-rooms. In a land where there is boundlessliberty of divorce, wedlock is described as the indissolublecompact. "A youth and maiden meeting by chance, or broughttogether by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities,go home, and dream of each other. Such," says Rasselas, "is thecommon process of marriage." Such it may have been, and maystill be, in London, but assuredly not at Cairo. A writer whowas guilty of such improprieties had little right to blame thepoet who made Hector quote Aristotle, and represented JulioRomano as flourishing in the days of the oracle of Delphi.

By such exertions as have been described, Johnson supportedhimself till the year 1762. In that year a great change in hiscircumstances took place. He had from a child been an enemy ofthe reigning dynasty. His Jacobite prejudices had been exhibitedwith little disguise both in his works and in his conversation. Even in his massy and elaborate Dictionary, he had, with astrange want of taste and judgment, inserted bitter andcontumelious reflections on the Whig party. The excise, whichwas a favourite resource of Whig financiers, he had designated asa hateful tax. He had railed against the commissioners of excisein language so coarse that they had seriously thought ofprosecuting him. He had with difficulty been prevented fromholding up the Lord Privy Seal by name as an example of themeaning of the word "renegade." A pension he had defined as paygiven to a state hireling to betray his country; a pensioner as aslave of state hired by a stipend to obey a master. It seemedunlikely that the author of these definitions would himself bepensioned. But that was a time of wonders. George the Third hadascended the throne; and had, in the course of a few months,disgusted many of the old friends and conciliated many of the oldenemies of his house. The city was becoming mutinous. Oxfordwas becoming loyal. Cavendishes and Bentincks were murmuring. Somersets and Wyndhams were hastening to kiss hands. The head ofthe treasury was now Lord Bute, who was a Tory, and could have noobjection to Johnson's Toryism. Bute wished to be thought apatron of men of letters; and Johnson was one of the most eminentand one of the most needy men of letters in Europe. A pension ofthree hundred a year was graciously offered, and with very littlehesitation accepted.

This event produced a change in Johnson's whole way of life. Forthe first time since his boyhood he no longer felt the daily goadurging him to the daily toil. He was at liberty, after thirtyyears of anxiety and drudgery, to indulge his constitutionalindolence, to lie in bed till two in the afternoon, and to sit uptalking till four in the morning, without fearing either theprinter's devil or the sheriff's officer.

One laborious task indeed he had bound himself to perform. Hehad received large subscriptions for his promised edition ofShakspeare; he had lived on those subscriptions during someyears: and he could not without disgrace omit to perform hispart of the contract. His friends repeatedly exhorted him tomake an effort; and he repeatedly resolved to do so. But,notwithstanding their exhortations and his resolutions, monthfollowed month, year followed year, and nothing was done. Heprayed fervently against his idleness; he determined, as often ashe received the sacrament, that he would no longer doze away andtrifle away his time; but the spell under which he lay resistedprayer and sacrament. His private notes at this time are made upof self-reproaches. "My indolence," he wrote on Easter Eve in1764, "has sunk into grosser sluggishness. A kind of strangeoblivion has overspread me, so that I know not what has become ofthe last year." Easter 1765 came, and found him still in thesame state. "My time," he wrote, "has been unprofitably spent,and seems as a dream that has left nothing behind. My memorygrows confused, and I know not how the days pass over me." Happily for his honour, the charm which held him captive was atlength broken by no gentle or friendly hand. He had been weakenough to pay serious attention to a story about a ghost whichhaunted a house in Cock Lane, and had actually gone himself withsome of his friends, at one in the morning, to St John's Church,Clerkenwell, in the hope of receiving a communication from theperturbed spirit. But the spirit, though adjured with allsolemnity, remained obstinately silent; and it soon appeared thata naughty girl of eleven had been amusing herself by making foolsof so many philosophers. Churchill, who, confidant in hispowers, drunk with popularity, and burning with party spirit, waslooking for some man of established fame and Tory politics toinsult, celebrated the Cock Lane Ghost in three cantos, nicknamedJohnson Pomposo, asked where the book was which had been so longpromised and so liberally paid for, and directly accused thegreat moralist of cheating. This terrible word proved effectual;and in October 1765 appeared, after a delay of nine years, thenew edition of Shakspeare.

This publication saved Johnson's character for honesty, but addednothing to the fame of his abilities and learning. The preface,though it contains some good passages, is not in his best manner. The most valuable notes are those in which he had an opportunityof showing how attentively he had during many years observedhuman life and human nature. The best specimen is the note onthe character of Polonius. Nothing so good is to be found evenin Wilhelm Meister's admirable examination of Hamlet. But herepraise must end. It would be difficult to name a more slovenly,a more worthless edition of any great classic. The reader mayturn over play after play without finding one happy conjecturalemendation, or one ingenious and satisfactory explanation of apassage which had baffled preceding commentators. Johnson had,in his prospectus, told the world that he was peculiarly fittedfor the task which he had undertaken, because he had, as alexicographer, been under the necessity of taking a wider view ofthe English language than any of his predecessors. That hisknowledge of our literature was extensive is indisputable. But,unfortunately, he had altogether neglected that very part of ourliterature with which it is especially desirable that an editorof Shakspeare should be conversant. It is dangerous to assert anegative. Yet little will be risked by the assertion, that inthe two folio volumes of the English Dictionary there is not asingle passage quoted from any dramatist of the Elizabethan age,except Shakspeare and Ben. Even from Ben the quotations are few. Johnson might easily, in a few months, have made himself wellacquainted with every old play that was extant. But it neverseems to have occurred to him that this was a necessarypreparation for the work which he had undertaken. He woulddoubtless have admitted that it would be the height of absurdityin a man who was not familiar with the works of Aeschylus andEuripides to publish an edition of Sophocles. Yet he ventured topublish an edition of Shakspeare, without having ever in hislife, as far as can be discovered, read a single scene ofMassinger, Ford, Decker, Webster, Marlow, Beaumont, or Fletcher.His detractors were noisy and scurrilous. Those who most lovedand honoured him had little to say in praise of the manner inwhich he had discharged the duty of a commentator. He had,however, acquitted himself of a debt which had long lain on hisconscience; and he sank back into the repose from which the stingof satire had roused him. He long continued to live upon thefame which he had already won. He was honoured by the Universityof Oxford with a Doctor's degree, by the Royal Academy with aprofessorship, and by the King with an interview, in which hisMajesty most graciously expressed a hope that so excellent awriter would not cease to write. In the interval, however,between 1765 and 1775 Johnson published only two or threepolitical tracks, the longest of which he could have produced inforty-eight hours, if he had worked as he worked on the life ofSavage and on Rasselas.

But, though his pen was now idle, his tongue was active. Theinfluence exercised by his conversation, directly upon those withwhom he lived, and indirectly on the whole literary world, wasaltogether without a parallel. His colloquial talents wereindeed of the highest order. He had strong sense, quickdiscernment, wit, humour, immense knowledge of literature and oflife, and an infinite store of curious anecdotes. As respectedstyle, he spoke far better than he wrote. Every sentence whichdropped from his lips was as correct in structure as the mostnicely balanced period of the Rambler. But in his talk there wasno pompous triads, and little more than a fair proportion ofwords in "osity" and "ation". All was simplicity, ease, andvigour. He uttered his short, weighty, and pointed sentenceswith a power of voice, and a justness and energy of emphasis, ofwhich the effect was rather increased than diminished by therollings of his huge form, and by the asthmatic gaspings andpuffings in which the peals of his eloquence generally ended. Nor did the laziness which made him unwilling to sit down to hisdesk prevent him from giving instruction or entertainment orally. To discuss questions of taste, of learning, casuistry, inlanguage so exact and so forcible that it might have been printedwithout the alteration of a word, was to him no exertion, but apleasure. He loved, as he said, to fold his legs and have histalk out. He was ready to bestow the overflowings of his fullmind on anybody who would start a subject, on a fellow-passengerin a stage coach, or on the person who sate at the same tablewith him in an eating-house. But his conversation was nowhere sobrilliant and striking as when he was surrounded by a fewfriends, whose abilities and knowledge enabled them, as he onceexpressed it, to send him back every ball that he threw. Some ofthese, in 1764, formed themselves into a club, which graduallybecame a formidable power in the commonwealth of letters. Theverdicts pronounced by this conclave on new books were speedilyknown over all London, and were sufficient to sell off a wholeedition in a day, or to condemn the sheets to the service of thetrunk-maker and the pastry-cook. Nor shall we think this strangewhen we consider what great and various talents and acquirementsmet in the little fraternity. Goldsmith was the representativeof poetry and light literature, Reynolds of the arts, Burke ofpolitical eloquence and political philosophy. There, too, wereGibbon, the greatest historian, and Jones, the greatest linguist,of the age. Garrick brought to the meetings his inexhaustiblepleasantry, his incomparable mimicry, and his consummateknowledge of stage effect. Among the most constant attendantswere two high-born and high-bred gentlemen, closely boundtogether by friendship, but of widely different characters andhabits; Bennet Langton, distinguished by his skill in Greekliterature, by the orthodoxy of his opinions, and by the sanctityof his life; and Topham Beauclerk, renowned for his amours, hisknowledge of the gay world, his fastidious taste, and hissarcastic wit. To predominate over such a society was not easy. Yet even over such a society Johnson predominated. Burke mightindeed have disputed the supremacy to which others were under thenecessity of submitting. But Burke, though not generally a verypatient listener, was content to take the second part whenJohnson was present; and the club itself, consisting of so manyeminent men, is to this day popularly designated as Johnson'sClub.

Among the members of this celebrated body was one to whom it hasowed the greater part of its celebrity, yet who was regarded withlittle respect by his brethren, and had not without difficultyobtained a seat among them. This was James Boswell, a youngScotch lawyer, heir to an honourable name and a fair estate. That he was a coxcomb and a bore, weak, vain, pushing, curious,garrulous, was obvious to all who were acquainted with him. Thathe could not reason, that he had no wit, no humour, no eloquence,is apparent from his writings. And yet his writings are readbeyond the Mississippi, and under the Southern Cross, and arelikely to be read as long as the English exists, either as aliving or as a dead language. Nature had made him a slave and anidolater. His mind resembles those creepers which the botanistscall parasites, and which can subsist only by clinging round thestems and imbibing the juices of stronger plants. He must havefastened himself on somebody. He might have fastened himself onWilkes, and have become the fiercest patriot in the Bill ofRights Society. He might have fastened himself on Whitfield, andhave become the loudest field preacher among the CalvinisticMethodists. In a happy hour he fastened himself on Johnson. Thepair might seem ill matched. For Johnson had early beenprejudiced against Boswell's country. To a man of Johnson'sstrong understanding and irritable temper, the silly egotism andadulation of Boswell must have been as teasing as the constantbuzz of a fly. Johnson hated to be questioned; and Boswell waseternally catechising him on all kinds of subjects, and sometimespropounded such questions as "What would you do, sir, if you werelocked up in a tower with a baby?" Johnson was a water drinker;and Boswell was a wine-bibber, and indeed little better than ahabitual sot. It was impossible that there should be perfectharmony between two such companions. Indeed, the great man wassometimes provoked into fits of passion in which he said thingswhich the small man, during a few hours, seriously resented. Every quarrel, however, was soon made up. During twenty yearsthe disciple continued to worship the master: the mastercontinued to scold the disciple, to sneer at him, and to lovehim. The two friends ordinarily resided at a great distance fromeach other. Boswell practised in the Parliament House ofEdinburgh, and could pay only occasional visits to London. During those visits his chief business was to watch Johnson, todiscover all Johnson's habits, to turn the conversation tosubjects about which Johnson was likely to say somethingremarkable, and to fill quarto note books with minutes of whatJohnson had said. In this way were gathered the materials out ofwhich was afterwards constructed the most interestingbiographical work in the world.

Soon after the club began to exist, Johnson formed a connectionless important indeed to his fame, but much more important to hishappiness, than his connection with Boswell. Henry Thrale, oneof the most opulent brewers in the kingdom, a man of sound andcultivated understanding, rigid principles, and liberal spirit,was married to one of those clever, kind-hearted, engaging, vain,pert young women, who are perpetually doing or saying what is notexactly right, but who, do or say what they may, are alwaysagreeable. In 1765 the Thrales became acquainted with Johnson;and the acquaintance ripened fast into friendship. They wereastonished and delighted by the brilliancy of his conversation. They were flattered by finding that a man so widely celebrated,preferred their house to any other in London. Even thepeculiarities which seemed to unfit him for civilised society,his gesticulations, his rollings, his puffings, his mutterings,the strange way in which he put on his clothes, the ravenouseagerness with which he devoured his dinner, his fits ofmelancholy, his fits of anger, his frequent rudeness, hisoccasional ferocity, increased the interest which his newassociates took in him. For these things were the cruel marksleft behind by a life which had been one long conflict withdisease and with adversity. In a vulgar hack writer suchoddities would have excited only disgust. But in a man ofgenius, learning, and virtue their effect was to add pity toadmiration and esteem. Johnson soon had an apartment at thebrewery in Southwark, and a still more pleasant apartment at thevilla of his friends on Streatham Common. A large part of everyyear he passed in those abodes, abodes which must have seemedmagnificent and luxurious indeed, when compared with the dens inwhich he had generally been lodged. But his chief pleasures werederived from what the astronomer of his Abyssinian tale called"the endearing elegance of female friendship." Mrs Thralerallied him, soothed him, coaxed him, and, if she sometimesprovoked him by her flippancy, made ample amends by listening tohis reproofs with angelic sweetness of temper. When he wasdiseased in body and in mind, she was the most tender of nurses. No comfort that wealth could purchase, no contrivance thatwomanly ingenuity, set to work by womanly compassion, coulddevise, was wanting to his sick-room. He requited her kindnessby an affection pure as the affection of a father, yet delicatelytinged with a gallantry, which, though awkward, must have beenmore flattering than the attentions of a crowd of the fools whogloried in the names, now obsolete, of Buck and Maccaroni. Itshould seem that a full half of Johnson's life, during aboutsixteen years, was passed under the roof of the Thrales. Heaccompanied the family sometimes to Bath, and sometimes toBrighton, once to Wales, and once to Paris. But he had at thesame time a house in one of the narrow and gloomy courts on thenorth of Fleet Street. In the garrets was his library, a largeand miscellaneous collection of books, falling to pieces andbegrimed with dust. On a lower floor he sometimes, but veryrarely, regaled a friend with a plain dinner, a veal pie, or aleg of lamb and spinage, and a rice pudding. Nor was thedwelling uninhabited during his long absences. It was the homeof the most extraordinary assemblage of inmates that ever wasbrought together. At the head of the establishment Johnson hadplaced an old lady named Williams, whose chief recommendationswere her blindness and her poverty. But, in spite of her murmursand reproaches, he gave an asylum to another lady who was as pooras herself, Mrs Desmoulins, whose family he had known many yearsbefore in Staffordshire. Room was found for the daughter of MrsDesmoulins, and for another destitute damsel, who was generallyaddressed as Miss Carmichael, but whom her generous host calledPolly. An old quack doctor named Levett, who bled and dosedcoal-heavers and hackney coachmen, and received for fees crustsof bread, bits of bacon, glasses of gin, and sometimes a littlecopper, completed this strange menagerie. All these poorcreatures were at constant war with each other, and withJohnson's negro servant Frank. Sometimes, indeed, theytransferred their hostilities from the servant to the master,complained that a better table was not kept for them, and railedor maundered till their benefactor was glad to make his escape toStreatham, or to the Mitre Tavern. And yet he, who was generallythe haughtiest and most irritable of mankind, who was but tooprompt to resent anything which looked like a slight on the partof a purse-proud bookseller, or of a noble and powerful patron,bore patiently from mendicants, who, but for his bounty, musthave gone to the workhouse, insults more provoking than those forwhich he had knocked down Osborne and bidden defiance toChesterfield. Year after year Mrs Desmoulins, Polly, and Levett,continued to torment him and to live upon him.

The course of life which has been described was interrupted inJohnson's sixty-fourth year by an important event. He had earlyread an account of the Hebrides, and had been much interested bylearning that there was so near him a land peopled by a racewhich was still as rude and simple as in the middle ages. A wishto become intimately acquainted with a state of society soutterly unlike all that he had ever seen frequently crossed hismind. But it is not probable that his curiosity would haveovercome his habitual sluggishness, and his love of the smoke,the mud, and the cries of London, had not Boswell importuned himto attempt the adventure, and offered to be his squire. Atlength, in August 1773, Johnson crossed the Highland line, andplunged courageously into what was then considered, by mostEnglishmen, as a dreary and perilous wilderness. After wanderingabout two months through the Celtic region, sometimes in rudeboats which did not protect him from the rain, and sometimes onsmall shaggy ponies which could hardly bear his weight, hereturned to his old haunts with a mind full of new images and newtheories. During the following year he employed himself inrecording his adventures. About the beginning of 1775, hisJourney to the Hebrides was published, and was, during someweeks, the chief subject of conversation in all circles in whichany attention was paid to literature. The book is still readwith pleasure. The narrative is entertaining; the speculations,whether sound or unsound, are always ingenious; and the style,though too stiff and pompous, is somewhat easier and moregraceful than that of his early writings. His prejudice againstthe Scotch had at length become little more than matter of jest;and whatever remained of the old feeling had been effectuallyremoved by the kind and respectful hospitality with which he hadbeen received in every part of Scotland. It was, of course, notto be expected that an Oxonian Tory should praise thePresbyterian polity and ritual, or that an eye accustomed to thehedgerows and parks of England should not be struck by thebareness of Berwickshire and East Lothian. But even in censureJohnson's tone is not unfriendly. The most enlightenedScotchmen, with Lord Mansfield at their head, were well pleased. But some foolish and ignorant Scotchmen were moved to anger by alittle unpalatable truth which was mingled with much eulogy, andassailed him whom they chose to consider as the enemy of theircountry with libels much more dishonourable to their country thananything that he had ever said or written. They publishedparagraphs in the newspapers, articles in the magazines, sixpennypamphlets, five-shilling books. One scribbler abused Johnson forbeing blear-eyed; another for being a pensioner; a third informedthe world that one of the Doctor's uncles had been convicted offelony in Scotland, and had found that there was in that countryone tree capable of supporting the weight of an Englishman. Macpherson, whose Fingal had been proved in the Journey to be animpudent forgery, threatened to take vengeance with a cane. Theonly effect of this threat was that Johnson reiterated the chargeof forgery in the most contemptuous terms, and walked about,during some time, with a cudgel, which, if the impostor had notbeen too wise to encounter it, would assuredly have descendedupon him, to borrow the sublime language of his own epic poem,"like a hammer on the red son of the furnace."

Of other assailants Johnson took no notice whatever. He hadearly resolved never to be drawn into controversy; and he adheredto his resolution with a steadfastness which is the moreextraordinary, because he was, both intellectually and morally,of the stuff of which controversialists are made. Inconversation, he was a singularly eager, acute, and pertinaciousdisputant. When at a loss for good reasons, he had recourse tosophistry; and, when heated by altercation, he made unsparing useof sarcasm and invective. But, when he took his pen in his hand,his whole character seemed to be changed. A hundred bad writersmisrepresented him and reviled him; but not one of the hundredcould boast of having been thought by him worthy of a refutation,or even of a retort. The Kenricks, Campbells, MacNicols, andHendersons, did their best to annoy him, in the hope that hewould give them importance by answering them. But the readerwill in vain search his works for any allusion to Kenrick orCampbell, to MacNicol or Henderson. One Scotchman, bent onvindicating the fame of Scotch learning, defied him to the combatin a detestable Latin hexameter.

"Maxime, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum."

But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He had learned,both from his own observation and from literary history, in whichhe was deeply read, that the place of books in the publicestimation is fixed, not by what is written about them, but bywhat is written in them; and that an author whose works arelikely to live is very unwise if he stoops to wrangle withdetractors whose works are certain to die. He always maintainedthat fame was a shuttlecock which could be kept up only by beingbeaten back, as well as beaten forward, and which would soon fallif there were only one battledore. No saying was oftener in hismouth than that fine apophthegm of Bentley, that no man was everwritten down but by himself.

Unhappily, a few months after the appearance of the Journey tothe Hebrides, Johnson did what none of his envious assailantscould have done, and to a certain extent succeeded in writinghimself down. The disputes between England and her Americancolonies had reached a point at which no amicable adjustment waspossible. Civil war was evidently impending; and the ministersseem to have thought that the eloquence of Johnson might withadvantage be employed to inflame the nation against theopposition here, and against the rebels beyond the Atlantic. Hehad already written two or three tracts in defence of the foreignand domestic policy of the government; and those tracts, thoughhardly worthy of him, were much superior to the crowd ofpamphlets which lay on the counters of Almon and Stockdale. Buthis Taxation No Tyranny was a pitiable failure. The very titlewas a silly phrase, which can have been recommended to his choiceby nothing but a jingling alliteration which he ought to havedespised. The arguments were such as boys use in debatingsocieties. The pleasantry was as awkward as the gambols of ahippopotamus. Even Boswell was forced to own that, in thisunfortunate piece, he could detect no trace of his master'spowers. The general opinion was that the strong faculties whichhad produced the Dictionary and the Rambler were beginning tofeel the effect of time and of disease, and that the old manwould best consult his credit by writing no more.

But this was a great mistake. Johnson had failed, not becausehis mind was less vigorous than when he wrote Rasselas in theevenings of a week, but because he had foolishly chosen, orsuffered others to choose for him, a subject such as he would atno time have been competent to treat. He was in no sense astatesman. He never willingly read or thought or talked aboutaffairs of state. He loved biography, literary history, thehistory of manners; but political history was positivelydistasteful to him. The question at issue between the coloniesand the mother country was a question about which he had reallynothing to say. He failed, therefore, as the greatest men mustfail when they attempt to do that for which they are unfit; asBurke would have failed if Burke had tried to write comedies likethose of Sheridan; as Reynolds would have failed if Reynolds hadtried to paint landscapes like those of Wilson. Happily, Johnsonsoon had an opportunity of proving most signally that his failurewas not to be ascribed to intellectual decay.

On Easter Eve 1777, some persons, deputed by a meeting whichconsisted of forty of the first booksellers in London, calledupon him. Though he had some scruples about doing business atthat season, he received his visitors with much civility. Theycame to inform him that a new edition of the English poets, fromCowley downwards, was in contemplation, and to ask him to furnishshort biographical prefaces. He readily undertook the task, atask for which he was pre-eminently qualified. His knowledge ofthe literary history of England since the Restoration wasunrivalled. That knowledge he had derived partly from books, andpartly from sources which had long been closed; from old GrubStreet traditions; from the talk of forgotten poetasters andpamphleteers who had long been lying in parish vaults; from therecollections of such men as Gilbert Walmesley, who had conversedwith the wits of Button; Cibber, who had mutilated the plays oftwo generations of dramatists; Orrery, who had been admitted tothe society of Swift; and Savage, who had rendered services of novery honourable kind to Pope. The biographer therefore sate downto his task with a mind full of matter. He had at first intendedto give only a paragraph to every minor poet, and only four orfive pages to the greatest name. But the flood of anecdote andcriticism overflowed the narrow channel. The work, which wasoriginally meant to consist only of a few sheets, swelled intoten volumes, small volumes, it is true, and not closely printed. The first four appeared in 1779, the remaining six in 1781.

The Lives of the Poets are, on the whole, the best of Johnson'sworks. The narratives are as entertaining as any novel. Theremarks on life and on human nature are eminently shrewd andprofound. The criticisms are often excellent, and, even whengrossly and provokingly unjust, well deserve to be studied. For,however erroneous they may be, they are never silly. They arethe judgments of a mind trammelled by prejudice and deficient insensibility, but vigorous and acute. They therefore generallycontain a portion of valuable truth which deserves to beseparated from the alloy; and, at the very worst, they meansomething, a praise to which much of what is called criticism inour time has no pretensions.

Savage's Life Johnson reprinted nearly as it had appeared in1744. Whoever, after reading that life, will turn to the otherlives will be struck by the difference of style. Since Johnsonhad been at ease in his circumstances he had written little andhad talked much. When, therefore, he, after the lapse of years,resumed his pen, the mannerism which he had contracted while hewas in the constant habit of elaborate composition was lessperceptible than formerly; and his diction frequently had acolloquial ease which it had formerly wanted. The improvementmay be discerned by a skilful critic in the Journey to theHebrides, and in the Lives of the Poets is so obvious that itcannot escape the notice of the most careless reader.

Among the lives the best are perhaps those of Cowley, Dryden, andPope. The very worst is, beyond all doubt, that of Gray.

This great work at once became popular. There was, indeed, muchjust and much unjust censure: but even those who were loudest inblame were attracted by the book in spite of themselves. Malonecomputed the gains of the publishers at five or six thousandpounds. But the writer was very poorly remunerated. Intendingat first to write very short prefaces, he had stipulated for onlytwo hundred guineas. The booksellers, when they saw how far hisperformance had surpassed his promise, added only anotherhundred. Indeed, Johnson, though he did not despise, or affectto despise, money, and though his strong sense and longexperience ought to have qualified him to protect his owninterests, seems to have been singularly unskilful and unlucky inhis literary bargains. He was generally reputed the firstEnglish writer of his time. Yet several writers of his time soldtheir copyrights for sums such as he never ventured to ask. Togive a single instance, Robertson received four thousand fivehundred pounds for the History of Charles V.; and it is nodisrespect to the memory of Robertson to say that the History ofCharles V. is both a less valuable and a less amusing book thanthe Lives of the Poets.

Johnson was now in his seventy-second year. The infirmities ofage were coming fast upon him. That inevitable event of which henever thought without horror was brought near to him; and hiswhole life was darkened by the shadow of death. He had often topay the cruel price of longevity. Every year he lost what couldnever be replaced. The strange dependents to whom he had givenshelter, and to whom, in spite of their faults, he was stronglyattached by habit, dropped off one by one; and, in the silence ofhis home, he regretted even the noise of their scolding matches. The kind and generous Thrale was no more; and it would have beenwell if his wife had been laid beside him. But she survived tobe the laughing-stock of those who had envied her, and to drawfrom the eyes of the old man who had loved her beyond anything inthe world tears far more bitter than he would have shed over hergrave. With some estimable and many agreeable qualities, she wasnot made to be independent. The control of a mind more steadfastthan her own was necessary to her respectability. While she wasrestrained by her husband, a man of sense and firmness, indulgentto her taste in trifles, but always the undisputed master of hishouse, her worst offences had been impertinent jokes, white lies,and short fits of pettishness ending in sunny good humour. Buthe was gone; and she was left an opulent widow of forty, withstrong sensibility, volatile fancy, and slender judgment. Shesoon fell in love with a music-master from Brescia, in whomnobody but herself could discover anything to admire. Her pride,and perhaps some better feelings, struggled hard against thisdegrading passion. But the struggle irritated her nerves, souredher temper, and at length endangered her health. Conscious thather choice was one which Johnson could not approve, she becamedesirous to escape from his inspection. Her manner towards himchanged. She was sometimes cold and sometimes petulant. She didnot conceal her joy when he left Streatham; she never pressed himto return; and, if he came unbidden, she received him in a mannerwhich convinced him that he was no longer a welcome guest. Hetook the very intelligible hints which she gave. He read, forthe last time, a chapter of the Greek testament in the librarywhich had been formed by himself. In a solemn and tender prayerhe commended the house and its inmates to the Divine protection,and, with emotions which choked his voice and convulsed hispowerful frame, left for ever that beloved home for the gloomyand desolate house behind Fleet Street, where the few and evildays which still remained to him were to run out. Here, in June1783, he had a paralytic stroke, from which, however, herecovered, and which does not appear to have at all impaired hisintellectual faculties. But other maladies came thick upon him. His asthma tormented him day and night. Dropsical symptoms madetheir appearance. While sinking under a complication ofdiseases, he heard that the woman whose friendship had been thechief happiness of sixteen years of his life had married anItalian fiddler; that all London was crying shame upon her; andthat the newspapers and magazines were filled with allusions tothe Ephesian matron, and the two pictures in Hamlet. Hevehemently said that he would try to forget her existence. Henever uttered her name. Every memorial of her which met his eyehe flung into the fire. She meanwhile fled from the laughter andhisses of her countrymen and countrywomen to a land where she wasunknown, hastened across Mount Cenis, and learned, while passinga merry Christmas of concerts and lemonade parties at Milan, thatthe great man with whose name hers is inseparably associated hadceased to exist.

He had, in spite of much mental and much bodily affliction, clungvehemently to life. The feeling described in that fine butgloomy paper which closes the series of his Idlers seemed to growstronger in him as his last hour drew near. He fancied that heshould be able to draw his breath more easily in a southernclimate, and would probably have set out for Rome and Naples, butfor his fear of the expense of the journey. That expense,indeed, he had the means of defraying; for he had laid up abouttwo thousand pounds, the fruit of labours which had made thefortune of several publishers. But he was unwilling to break inupon this hoard; and he seems to have wished even to keep itsexistence a secret. Some of his friends hoped that thegovernment might be induced to increase his pension to sixhundred pounds a year: but this hope was disappointed; and heresolved to stand one English winter more. That winter was hislast. His legs grew weaker; his breath grew shorter; the fatalwater gathered fast, in spite of incisions which he, courageousagainst pain, but timid against death, urged his surgeons to makedeeper and deeper. Though the tender care which had mitigatedhis sufferings during months of sickness at Streatham waswithdrawn, he was not left desolate. The ablest physicians andsurgeons attended him, and refused to accept fees from him. Burke parted from him with deep emotion. Windham sate much inthe sick room, arranged the pillows, and sent his own servant towatch a night by the bed. Frances Burney, whom the old man hadcherished with fatherly kindness, stood weeping at the door;while Langton, whose piety eminently qualified him to be anadviser and comforter at such a time, received the last pressureof his friend's hand within. When at length the moment, dreadedthrough so many years, came close, the dark cloud passed awayfrom Johnson's mind. His temper became unusually patient andgentle; he ceased to think with terror of death, and of thatwhich lies beyond death; and he spoke much of the mercy of God,and of the propitiation of Christ. In this serene frame of mindhe died on the 13th of December 1784. He was laid, a week later,in Westminster Abbey, among the eminent men of whom he had beenthe historian,--Cowley and Denham, Dryden and Congreve, Gay,Prior, and Addison.

Since his death the popularity of his works--the Lives of thePoets, and, perhaps, the Vanity of Human Wishes, excepted--hasgreatly diminished. His Dictionary has been altered by editorstill it can scarcely be called his. An allusion to his Rambleror his Idler is not readily apprehended in literary circles. Thefame even of Rasselas has grown somewhat dim. But, though thecelebrity of the writings may have declined, the celebrity of thewriter, strange to say, is as great as ever. Boswell's book hasdone for him more than the best of his own books could do. Thememory of other authors is kept alive by their works. But thememory of Johnson keeps many of his works alive. The oldphilosopher is still among us in the brown coat with the metalbuttons and the shirt which ought to be at wash, blinking,puffing, rolling his head, drumming with his fingers, tearing hismeat like a tiger, and swallowing his tea in oceans. No humanbeing who has been more than seventy years in the grave is sowell known to us. And it is but just to say that our intimateacquaintance with what he would himself have called theanfractuosities of his intellect and of his temper serves only tostrengthen our conviction that he was both a great and a goodman.

...

WILLIAM PITT.

(January 1859.)

William Pitt, the second son of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham,and of Lady Hester Granville, daughter of Hester Countess Temple,was born on the 28th of May 1759. The child inherited a namewhich, at the time of his birth, was the most illustrious in thecivilised world, and was pronounced by every Englishman withpride, and by every enemy of England with mingled admiration andterror. During the first year of his life, every month had itsilluminations and bonfires, and every wind brought some messengercharged with joyful tidings and hostile standards. In Westphaliathe English infantry won a great battle which arrested the armiesof Louis the Fifteenth in the midst of a career of conquest;Boscawen defeated one French fleet on the coast of Portugal;Hawke put to flight another in the Bay of Biscay; Johnson tookNiagara; Amherst took Ticonderoga; Wolfe died by the mostenviable of deaths under the walls of Quebec; Clive destroyed aDutch armament in the Hooghly, and established the Englishsupremacy in Bengal; Coote routed Lally at Wandewash, andestablished the English supremacy in the Carnatic. The nation,while loudly applauding the successful warriors, considered themall, on sea and on land, in Europe, in America, and in Asia,merely as instruments which received their direction from onesuperior mind. It was the great William Pitt, the greatcommoner, who had vanquished French marshals in Germany, andFrench admirals on the Atlantic; who had conquered for hiscountry one great empire on the frozen shores of Ontario, andanother under the tropical sun near the mouths of the Ganges. Itwas not in the nature of things that popularity such as he atthis time enjoyed should be permanent. That popularity had lostits gloss before his children were old enough to understand thattheir father was a great man. He was at length placed insituations in which neither his talents for administration norhis talents for debate appeared to the best advantage. Theenergy and decision which had eminently fitted him for thedirection of war were not needed in time of peace. The lofty andspirit-stirring eloquence which had made him supreme in the Houseof Commons often fell dead on the House of Lords. A cruel maladyracked his joints, and left his joints only to fall on his nervesand on his brain. During the closing years of his life, he wasodious to the court, and yet was not on cordial terms with thegreat body of the opposition. Chatham was only the ruin of Pitt,but an awful and majestic ruin, not to be contemplated by any manof sense and feeling without emotions resembling those which areexcited by the remains of the Parthenon and of the Coliseum. Inone respect the old statesman was eminently happy. Whatevermight be the vicissitudes of his public life, he never failed tofind peace and love by his own hearth. He loved all hischildren, and was loved by them; and, of all his children, theone of whom he was fondest and proudest was his second son.

The child's genius and ambition displayed themselves with a rareand almost unnatural precocity. At seven, the interest which hetook in grave subjects, the ardour with which he pursued hisstudies, and the sense and vivacity of his remarks on books andon events, amazed his parents and instructors. One of hissayings of this date was reported to his mother by his tutor. InAugust 1766, when the world was agitated by the news that Mr Pitthad become Earl of Chatham, little William exclaimed, "I am gladthat I am not the eldest son. I want to speak in the House ofCommons like papa." A letter is extant in which Lady Chatham, awoman of considerable abilities, remarked to her lord, that theiryounger son at twelve had left far behind him his elder brother,who was fifteen. "The fineness," she wrote, "of William's mindmakes him enjoy with the greatest pleasure what would be abovethe reach of any other creature of his small age." At fourteenthe lad was in intellect a man. Hayley, who met him at Lyme inthe summer of 1773, was astonished, delighted, and somewhatoverawed, by hearing wit and wisdom from so young a mouth. Thepoet, indeed, was afterwards sorry that his shyness had preventedhim from submitting the plan of an extensive literary work, whichhe was then meditating, to the judgment of this extraordinaryboy. The boy, indeed, had already written a tragedy, bad ofcourse, but not worse than the tragedies of his friend. Thispiece is still preserved at Chevening, and is in some respectshighly curious. There is no love. The whole plot is political;and it is remarkable that the interest, such as it is, turns on acontest about a regency. On one side is a faithful servant ofthe Crown, on the other an ambitious and unprincipledconspirator. At length the King, who had been missing,reappears, resumes his power, and rewards the faithful defenderof his rights. A reader who should judge only by internalevidence would have no hesitation in pronouncing that the playwas written by some Pittite poetaster at the time of therejoicings for the recovery of George the Third in 1789.

The pleasure with which William's parents observed the rapiddevelopment of his intellectual powers was alloyed byapprehensions about his health. He shot up alarmingly fast; hewas often ill, and always weak; and it was feared that it wouldbe impossible to rear a stripling so tall, so slender, and sofeeble. Port wine was prescribed by his medical advisers: andit is said that he was, at fourteen, accustomed to take thisagreeable physic in quantities which would, in our abstemiousage, be thought much more than sufficient for any full-grown man. This regimen, though it would probably have killed ninety-nineboys out of a hundred, seems to have been well suited to thepeculiarities of William's constitution; for at fifteen he ceasedto be molested by disease, and, though never a strong man,continued, during many years of labour and anxiety, of nightspassed in debate and of summers passed in London, to be atolerably healthy one. It was probably on account of thedelicacy of his frame that he was not educated like other boys ofthe same rank. Almost all the eminent English statesmen andorators to whom he was afterwards opposed or allied, North, Fox,Shelburne, Windham, Grey, Wellesley, Grenville, Sheridan,Canning, went through the training of great public schools. LordChatham had himself been a distinguished Etonian: and it isseldom that a distinguished Etonian forgets his obligations toEton. But William's infirmities required a vigilance andtenderness such as could be found only at home. He was thereforebred under the paternal roof. His studies were superintended bya clergyman named Wilson; and those studies, though ofteninterrupted by illness, were prosecuted with extraordinarysuccess. Before the lad had completed his fifteenth year, hisknowledge both of the ancient languages and of mathematics wassuch as very few men of eighteen then carried up to college. Hewas therefore sent, towards the close of the year 1773, toPembroke Hall, in the university of Cambridge. So young astudent required much more than the ordinary care which a collegetutor bestows on undergraduates. The governor, to whom thedirection of William's academical life was confided, was abachelor of arts named Pretyman, who had been senior wrangler inthe preceding year, and who, though not a man of prepossessingappearance or brilliant parts, was eminently acute and laborious,a sound scholar, and an excellent geometrician. At Cambridge,Pretyman was, during more than two years, the inseparablecompanion, and indeed almost the only companion of his pupil. Aclose and lasting friendship sprang up between the pair. Thedisciple was able, before he completed his twenty-eighth year, tomake his preceptor Bishop of Lincoln and Dean of St Paul's; andthe preceptor showed his gratitude by writing a life of thedisciple, which enjoys the distinction of being the worstbiographical work of its size in the world.

Pitt, till he graduated, had scarcely one acquaintance, attendedchapel regularly morning and evening, dined every day in hall,and never went to a single evening party. At seventeen, he wasadmitted, after the bad fashion of those times, by right ofbirth, without any examination, to the degree of the Master ofArts. But he continued during some years to reside at college,and to apply himself vigorously, under Pretyman's direction, tothe studies of the place, while mixing freely in the bestacademic society.

The stock of learning which Pitt laid in during this part of hislife was certainly very extraordinary. In fact, it was all thathe ever possessed; for he very early became too busy to have anyspare time for books. The work in which he took the greatestdelight was Newton's Principia. His liking for mathematics,indeed, amounted to a passion, which, in the opinion of hisinstructors, themselves distinguished mathematicians, required tobe checked rather than encouraged. The acuteness and readinesswith which he solved problems was pronounced by one of the ablestof the moderators, who in those days presided over thedisputations in the schools, and conducted the examinations ofthe Senate House, to be unrivalled in the university. Nor wasthe youth's proficiency in classical learning less remarkable. In one respect, indeed, he appeared to disadvantage when comparedwith even second-rate and third-rate men from public schools. Hehad never, while under Wilson's care, been in the habit ofcomposing in the ancient languages: and he therefore neveracquired that knack of versification which is sometimes possessedby clever boys whose knowledge of the language and literature ofGreece and Rome is very superficial. It would have been utterlyout of his power to produce such charming elegiac lines as thosein which Wellesley bade farewell to Eton, or such Virgilianhexameters as those in which Canning described the pilgrimage toMecca. But it may be doubted whether any scholar has ever, attwenty, had a more solid and profound knowledge of the two greattongues of the old civilised world. The facility with which hepenetrated the meaning of the most intricate sentences in theAttic writers astonished veteran critics. He had set his hearton being intimately acquainted with all the extant poetry ofGreece, and was not satisfied till he had mastered Lycophron'sCassandra, the most obscure work in the whole range of ancientliterature. This strange rhapsody, the difficulties of whichhave perplexed and repelled many excellent scholars, "he read,"says his preceptor, "with an ease at first sight, which, if I hadnot witnessed it, I should have thought beyond the compass ofhuman intellect."

To modern literature Pitt paid comparatively little attention. He knew no living language except French; and French he knew veryimperfectly. With a few of the best English writers he wasintimate, particularly with Shakspeare and Milton. The debate inPandemonium was, as it well deserved to be, one of his favouritepassages; and his early friends used to talk, long after hisdeath, of the just emphasis and the melodious cadence with whichthey had heard him recite the incomparable speech of Belial. Hehad indeed been carefully trained from infancy in the art ofmanaging his voice, a voice naturally clear and deep-toned. Hisfather, whose oratory owed no small part of its effect to thatart, had been a most skilful and judicious instructor. At alater period, the wits of Brookes's, irritated by observing,night after night, how powerfully Pitt's sonorous elocutionfascinated the rows of country gentlemen, reproached him withhaving been "taught by his dad on a stool."

His education, indeed, was well adapted to form a greatparliamentary speaker. One argument often urged against thoseclassical studies which occupy so large apart of the early lifeof every gentleman bred in the south of our island is, that theyprevent him from acquiring a command of his mother tongue, andthat it is not unusual to meet with a youth of excellent parts,who writes Ciceronian Latin prose and Horatian Latin Alcaics, butwho would find it impossible to express his thoughts in pure,perspicuous, and forcible English. There may perhaps be sometruth in this observation. But the classical studies of Pittwere carried on in a peculiar manner, and had the effect ofenriching his English vocabulary, and of making him wonderfullyexpert in the art of constructing correct English sentences. Hispractice was to look over a page or two of a Greek or Latinauthor, to make himself master of the meaning, and then to readthe passage straightforward into his own language. Thispractice, begun under his first teacher Wilson, was continuedunder Pretyman. It is not strange that a young man of greatabilities, who had been exercised daily in this way during tenyears, should have acquired an almost unrivalled power of puttinghis thoughts, without premeditation, into words well selected andwell arranged.

Of all the remains of antiquity, the orations were those on whichhe bestowed the most minute examination. His favouriteemployment was to compare harangues on opposite sides of the samequestion, to analyse them, and to observe which of the argumentsof the first speaker were refuted by the second, which wereevaded, and which were left untouched. Nor was it only in booksthat he at this time studied the art of parliamentary fencing. When he was at home, he had frequent opportunities of hearingimportant debates at Westminster; and he heard them, not onlywith interest and enjoyment, but with a close scientificattention resembling that with which a diligent pupil at Guy'sHospital watches every turn of the hand of a great surgeonthrough a difficult operation. On one of these occasions, Pitt,a youth whose abilities were as yet known only to his own familyand to a small knot of college friends, was introduced on thesteps of the throne in the House of Lords to Fox, who was hissenior by eleven years, and who was already the greatest debater,and one of the greatest orators, that had appeared in England. Fox used afterwards to relate that, as the discussion proceeded,Pitt repeatedly turned to him, and said, "But surely, Mr Fox,that might be met thus;" or, "Yes; but he lays himself open tothis retort." What the particular criticisms were Fox hadforgotten; but he said that he was much struck at the time by theprecocity of the lad who, through the whole sitting, seemed to bethinking only how all the speeches on both sides could beanswered.

One of the young man's visits to the House of Lords was a sad andmemorable era in his life. He had not quite completed hisnineteenth year, when, on the 7th of April 1778, he attended hisfather to Westminster. A great debate was expected. It wasknown that France had recognised the independence of the UnitedStates. The Duke of Richmond was about to declare his opinionthat all thought of subjugating those states ought to berelinquished. Chatham had always maintained that the resistanceof the colonies to the mother country was justifiable. But heconceived, very erroneously, that on the day on which theirindependence should be acknowledged the greatness of Englandwould be at an end. Though sinking under the weight of years andinfirmities, he determined, in spite of the entreaties of hisfamily, to be in his place. His son supported him to a seat. The excitement and exertion were too much for the old man. Inthe very act of addressing the peers, he fell back inconvulsions. A few weeks later his corpse was borne, with gloomypomp, from the Painted Chamber to the Abbey. The favourite childand namesake of the deceased statesman followed the coffin aschief mourner, and saw it deposited in the transept where his ownwas destined to lie.

His elder brother, now Earl of Chatham, had means sufficient, andbarely sufficient, to support the dignity of the peerage. Theother members of the family were poorly provided for. Williamhad little more than three hundred a year. It was necessary forhim to follow a profession. He had already begun to eat histerms. In the spring of 1780 he came of age. He then quittedCambridge, was called to the bar, took chambers in Lincoln's Inn,and joined the western circuit. In the autumn of that year ageneral election took place; and he offered himself as acandidate for the university; but he was at the bottom of thepoll. It is said that the grave doctors, who then sate robed inscarlet, on the benches of Golgotha, thought it great presumptionin so young a man to solicit so high a distinction. He was,however, at the request of a hereditary friend, the Duke ofRutland, brought into Parliament by Sir James Lowther for theborough of Appleby.

The dangers of the country were at that time such as might wellhave disturbed even a constant mind. Army after army had beensent in vain against the rebellious colonists of North America. On pitched fields of battle the advantage had been with thedisciplined troops of the mother country. But it was not onpitched fields of battle that the event of such a contest couldbe decided. An armed nation, with hunger and the Atlantic forauxiliaries, was not to be subjugated. Meanwhile the House ofBourbon, humbled to the dust a few years before by the genius andvigour of Chatham, had seized the opportunity of revenge. Franceand Spain were united against us, and had recently been joined byHolland. The command of the Mediterranean had been for a timelost. The British flag had been scarcely able to maintain itselfin the British Channel. The northern powers professedneutrality; but their neutrality had a menacing aspect. In theEast, Hyder had descended on the Carnatic, had destroyed thelittle army of Baillie, and had spread terror even to theramparts of Fort Saint George. The discontents of Irelandthreatened nothing less than civil war. In England the authorityof the government had sunk to the lowest point. The King and theHouse of Commons were alike unpopular. The cry for parliamentaryreform was scarcely less loud and vehement than in the autumn of1830. Formidable associations, headed, not by ordinarydemagogues, but by men of high rank, stainless character, anddistinguished ability, demanded a revision of the representativesystem. The populace, emboldened by the impotence andirresolution of the government, had recently broken loose fromall restraint, besieged the chambers of the legislature, hustledpeers, hunted bishops, attacked the residences of ambassadors,opened prisons, burned and pulled down houses. London hadpresented during some days the aspect of a city taken by storm;and it had been necessary to form a camp among the trees of SaintJames's Park.

In spite of dangers and difficulties abroad and at home, Georgethe Third, with a firmness which had little affinity with virtueor with wisdom, persisted in his determination to put down theAmerican rebels by force of arms; and his ministers submittedtheir judgment to his. Some of them were probably actuatedmerely by selfish cupidity; but their chief, Lord North, a man ofhigh honour, amiable temper, winning manners, lively wit, andexcellent talents both for business and for debate, must beacquitted of all sordid motives. He remained at a post fromwhich he had long wished and had repeatedly tried to escape, onlybecause he had not sufficient fortitude to resist the entreatiesand reproaches of the King, who silenced all arguments bypassionately asking whether any gentleman, any man of spirit,could have the heart to desert a kind master in the hour ofextremity.

The opposition consisted of two parties which had once beenhostile to each other, and which had been very slowly, and, as itsoon appeared, very imperfectly reconciled, but which at thisconjuncture seemed to act together with cordiality. The largerof these parties consisted of the great body of the Whigaristocracy. Its head was Charles, Marquess of Rockingham, a manof sense and virtue, and in wealth and parliamentary interestequalled by very few of the English nobles, but afflicted with anervous timidity which prevented him from taking a prominent partin debate. In the House of Commons, the adherents of Rockinghamwere led by Fox, whose dissipated habits and ruined fortunes werethe talk of the whole town, but whose commanding genius, andwhose sweet, generous, and affectionate disposition, extorted theadmiration and love of those who most lamented the errors of hisprivate life. Burke, superior to Fox in largeness ofcomprehension, in extent of knowledge, and in splendour ofimagination, but less skilled in that kind of logic and in thatkind of rhetoric which convince and persuade great assemblies,was willing to be the lieutenant of a young chief who might havebeen his son.

A smaller section of the opposition was composed of the oldfollowers of Chatham. At their head was William, Earl ofShelburne, distinguished both as a statesman and as a lover ofscience and letters. With him were leagued Lord Camden, who hadformerly held the Great Seal, and whose integrity, ability, andconstitutional knowledge commanded the public respect; Barre, aneloquent and acrimonious declaimer; and Dunning, who had longheld the first place at the English bar. It was to this partythat Pitt was naturally attracted.

On the 26th of February 1781, he made his first speech, in favourof Burke's plan of economical reform. Fox stood up at the samemoment, but instantly gave way. The lofty yet animateddeportment of the young member, his perfect self-possession, thereadiness with which he replied to the orators who had precededhim, the silver tones of his voice, the perfect structure of hisunpremeditated sentences, astonished and delighted his hearers. Burke, moved even to tears, exclaimed, "It is not a chip of theold block; it is the old block itself." "Pitt will be one of thefirst men in Parliament," said a member of the opposition to Fox. "He is so already," answered Fox, in whose nature envy had noplace. It is a curious fact, well remembered by some who werevery recently living, that soon after this debate Pitt's name wasput up by Fox at Brookes's.

On two subsequent occasions during that session Pitt addressedthe House, and on both fully sustained the reputation which hehad acquired on his first appearance. In the summer, after theprorogation, he again went the western circuit, held severalbriefs, and acquitted himself in such a manner that he was highlycomplimented by Buller from the bench, and by Dunning at the bar.

On the 27th of November the Parliament reassembled. Only forty-eight hours before had arrived tidings of the surrender ofCornwallis and his army; and it had consequently been necessaryto rewrite the royal speech. Every man in the kingdom, exceptthe King, was now convinced that it was mere madness to think ofconquering the United States. In the debate on the report of theaddress, Pitt spoke with even more energy and brilliancy than onany former occasion. He was warmly applauded by his allies; butit was remarked that no person on his own side of the house wasso loud in eulogy as Henry Dundas, the Lord Advocate of Scotland,who spoke from the ministerial ranks. That able and versatilepolitician distinctly foresaw the approaching downfall of thegovernment with which he was connected, and was preparing to makehis own escape from the ruin. From that night dates hisconnection with Pitt, a connection which soon became a closeintimacy, and which lasted till it was dissolved by death.

About a fortnight later, Pitt spoke in the committee of supply onthe army estimates. Symptoms of dissension had begun to appearon the Treasury bench. Lord George Germaine, the Secretary ofState, who was especially charged with the direction of the warin America, had held language not easily to be reconciled withdeclarations made by the First Lord of the Treasury. Pittnoticed the discrepancy with much force and keenness. LordGeorge and Lord North began to whisper together; and WelboreEllis, an ancient placeman who had been drawing salary almostevery quarter since the days of Henry Pelham, bent down betweenthem to put in a word. Such interruptions sometimes discomposeveteran speakers. Pitt stopped, and, looking at the group, said,with admirable readiness, "I shall wait till Nestor has composedthe dispute between Agamemnon and Achilles."

After several defeats, or victories hardly to be distinguishedfrom defeats, the ministry resigned. The King, reluctantly andungraciously, consented to accept Rockingham as first minister. Fox and Shelburne became Secretaries of State. Lord JohnCavendish, one of the most upright and honourable of men, wasmade Chancellor of the Exchequer. Thurlow, whose abilities andforce of character had made him the dictator of the House ofLords, continued to hold the great seal.

To Pitt was offered, through Shelburne, the Vice-Treasurership ofIreland, one of the easiest and most highly paid places in thegift of the crown; but the offer was, without hesitation,declined. The young statesman had resolved to accept no postwhich did not entitle him to a seat in the cabinet: and, in afew days later, he announced that resolution in the House ofCommons. It must be remembered that the cabinet was then a muchsmaller and more select body than at present. We have seencabinets of sixteen. In the time of our grandfathers a cabinetof ten or eleven was thought inconveniently large. Seven was anusual number. Even Burke, who had taken the lucrative office ofpaymaster, was not in the cabinet. Many therefore thought Pitt'sdeclaration indecent. He himself was sorry that he had made it. The words, he said in private, had escaped him in the heat ofspeaking; and he had no sooner uttered them than he would havegiven the world to recall them. They, however, did him no harmwith the public. The second William Pitt, it was said, had shownthat he had inherited the spirit, as well as the genius, of thefirst. In the son, as in the father, there might perhaps be toomuch pride; but there was nothing low or sordid. It might becalled arrogance in a young barrister, living in chambers onthree hundred a year, to refuse a salary of five thousand a year,merely because he did not choose to bind himself to speak or votefor plans which he had no share in framing; but surely sucharrogance was not very far removed from virtue.

Pitt gave a general support to the administration of Rockingham,but omitted, in the meantime, no opportunity of courting thatUltra-Whig party which the persecution of Wilkes and theMiddlesex election had called into existence, and which thedisastrous events of the war, and the triumph of republicanprinciples in America, had made formidable both in numbers and intemper. He supported a motion for shortening the duration ofParliaments. He made a motion for a committee to examine intothe state of the representation, and, in the speech, by whichthat motion was introduced, avowed himself the enemy of the closeboroughs, the strongholds of that corruption to which heattributed all the calamities of the nation, and which, as hephrased it in one of those exact and sonorous sentences of whichhe had a boundless command, had grown with the growth of Englandand strengthened with her strength, but had not diminished withher diminution or decayed with her decay. On this occasion hewas supported by Fox. The motion was lost by only twenty votesin a house of more than three hundred members. The reformersnever again had so good a division till the year 1831.

The new administration was strong in abilities, and was morepopular than any administration which had held office since thefirst year of George the Third, but was hated by the King,hesitatingly supported by the Parliament, and torn by internaldissensions. The Chancellor was disliked and distrusted byalmost all his colleagues. The two Secretaries of State regardedeach other with no friendly feeling. The line between theirdepartments had not been traced with precision; and there wereconsequently jealousies, encroachments, and complaints. It wasall that Rockingham could do to keep the peace in his cabinet;and, before the cabinet had existed three months, Rockinghamdied.

In an instant all was confusion. The adherents of the deceasedstatesman looked on the Duke of Portland as their chief. TheKing placed Shelburne at the head of the Treasury. Fox, LordJohn Cavendish, and Burke, immediately resigned their offices;and the new prime minister was left to constitute a governmentout of very defective materials. His own parliamentary talentswere great; but he could not be in the place where parliamentarytalents were most needed. It was necessary to find some memberof the House of Commons who could confront the great orators ofthe opposition; and Pitt alone had the eloquence and the couragewhich were required. He was offered the great place ofChancellor of the Exchequer; and he accepted it. He had scarcelycompleted his twenty-third year.

The Parliament was speedily prorogued. During the recess, anegotiation for peace which had been commenced under Rockinghamwas brought to a successful termination. England acknowledgedthe independence of her revolted colonies; and she ceded to herEuropean enemies some places in the Mediterranean and in the Gulfof Mexico. But the terms which she obtained were quite asadvantageous and honourable as the events of the war entitled herto expect, or as she was likely to obtain by persevering in acontest against immense odds. All her vital parts, all the realsources of her power, remained uninjured. She preserved even herdignity: for she ceded to the House of Bourbon only part of whatshe had won from that House in previous wars. She retained herIndian empire undiminished; and, in spite of the mightiestefforts of two great monarchies, her flag still waved on the rockof Gibraltar. There is not the slightest reason to believe thatFox, if he had remained in office, would have hesitated onemoment about concluding a treaty on such conditions. Unhappilythat great and most amiable man was, at this crisis, hurried byhis passions into an error which made his genius and his virtues,during a long course of years, almost useless to his country.

He saw that the great body of the House of Commons was dividedinto three parties, his own, that of North, and that ofShelburne; that none of those three parties was large enough tostand alone; that, therefore, unless two of them united, theremust be a miserably feeble administration, or more probably, arapid succession of miserably feeble administrations, and this ata time when a strong government was essential to the prosperityand respectability of the nation. It was then necessary andright that there should be a coalition. To every possiblecoalition there were objections. But, of all possiblecoalitions, that to which there were the fewest objections wasundoubtedly a coalition between Shelburne and Fox. It would havebeen generally applauded by the followers of both. It might havebeen made without any sacrifice of public principle on the partof either. Unhappily, recent bickerings had left in the mind ofFox a profound dislike and distrust of Shelburne. Pitt attemptedto mediate, and was authorised to invite Fox to return to theservice of the Crown. "Is Lord Shelburne," said Fox, "to remainprime minister?" Pitt answered in the affirmative. "It isimpossible that I can act under him," said Fox. "Thennegotiation is at an end," said Pitt; "for I cannot betray him." Thus the two statesmen parted. They were never again in aprivate room together.

As Fox and his friends would not treat with Shelburne, nothingremained to them but to treat with North. That fatal coalitionwhich is emphatically called "The Coalition" was formed. Notthree quarters of a year had elapsed since Fox and Burke hadthreatened North with impeachment, and had described him, nightafter night, as the most arbitrary, the most corrupt, the mostincapable of ministers. They now allied themselves with him forthe purpose of driving from office a statesman with whom theycannot be said to have differed as to any important question. Nor had they even the prudence and the patience to wait for someoccasion on which they might, without inconsistency, havecombined with their old enemies in opposition to the government. That nothing might be wanting to the scandal, the great orators,who had, during seven years, thundered against the war,determined to join with the authors of that war in passing a voteof censure on the peace.

The Parliament met before Christmas 1782. But it was not tillJanuary 1783 that the preliminary treaties were signed. On the17th of February they were taken into consideration by the Houseof Commons. There had been, during some days, floating rumoursthat Fox and North had coalesced; and the debate indicated buttoo clearly that those rumours were not unfounded. Pit wassuffering from indisposition: he did not rise till his ownstrength and that of his hearers were exhausted; and he wasconsequently less successful than on any former occasion. Hisadmirers owned that his speech was feeble and petulant. He sofar forgot himself as to advise Sheridan to confine himself toamusing theatrical audiences. This ignoble sarcasm gave Sheridanan opportunity of retorting with great felicity. "After what Ihave seen and heard to-night," he said, "I really feel stronglytempted to venture on a competition with so great an artist asBen Jonson, and to bring on the stage a second Angry Boy." On adivision, the address proposed by the supporters of thegovernment was rejected by a majority of sixteen.

But Pitt was not a man to be disheartened by a single failure, orto be put down by the most lively repartee. When a few dayslater, the opposition proposed a resolution directly censuringthe treaties, he spoke with an eloquence, energy, and dignitywhich raised his fame and popularity higher than ever. To thecoalition of Fox and North he alluded in language which drewforth tumultuous applause from his followers. "If," he said,"this ill-omened and unnatural marriage be not yet consummated, Iknow of a just and lawful impediment; and, in the name of thepublic weal, I forbid the banns."

The ministers were again left in a minority; and Shelburneconsequently tendered his resignation. It was accepted; but theKing struggled long and hard before he submitted to the termsdictated by Fox, whose faults he detested, and whose high spiritand powerful intellect he detested still more. The first placeat the board of Treasury was repeatedly offered to Pitt; but theoffer, though tempting, was steadfastly declined. The young man,whose judgment was as precocious as his eloquence, saw that histime was coming, but was not come, and was deaf to royalimportunities and reproaches. His Majesty, bitterly complainingof Pitt's faintheartedness, tried to break the coalition. Everyart of seduction was practised on North, but in vain. Duringseveral weeks the country remained without a government. It wasnot till all devices had failed, and till the aspect of the Houseof Commons became threatening, that the King gave way. The Dukeof Portland was declared First Lord of the Treasury. Thurlow wasdismissed. Fox and North became Secretaries of State, with powerostensibly equal. But Fox was the real prime minister.

The year was far advanced before the new arrangements werecompleted; and nothing very important was done during theremainder of the session. Pitt, now seated on the oppositionbench, brought the question of parliamentary reform a second timeunder the consideration of the Commons. He proposed to add tothe House at once a hundred county members and several membersfor metropolitan districts, and to enact that every borough ofwhich an election committee should report that the majority ofvoters appeared to be corrupt should lose the franchise. Themotion was rejected by 293 votes to 149.

After the prorogation, Pitt visited the Continent for the firstand last time. His travelling companion was one of his mostintimate friends, a young man of his own age, who had alreadydistinguished himself in Parliament by an engaging naturaleloquence, set off by the sweetest and most exquisitely modulatedof human voices, and whose affectionate heart, caressing manners,and brilliant wit, made him the most delightful of companions,William Wilberforce. That was the time of Anglomania in France;and at Paris the son of the great Chatham was absolutely huntedby men of letters and women of fashion, and forced, much againsthis will, into political disputation. One remarkable sayingwhich dropped from him during this tour has been preserved. AFrench gentleman expressed some surprise at the immense influencewhich Fox, a man of pleasure, ruined by the dice-box and theturf, exercised over the English nation. "You have not," saidPitt, "been under the wand of the magician."

In November 1783 the Parliament met again. The government hadirresistible strength in the House of Commons, and seemed to bescarcely less strong in the House of Lords, but was, in truth,surrounded on every side by dangers. The King was impatientlywaiting for the moment at which he could emancipate himself froma yoke which galled him so severely that he had more than onceseriously thought of retiring to Hanover; and the King wasscarcely more eager for a change than the nation. Fox and Northhad committed a fatal error. They ought to have known thatcoalitions between parties which have long been hostile cansucceed only when the wish for coalition pervades the lower ranksof both. If the leaders unite before there is any disposition tounion among the followers, the probability is that there will bea mutiny in both camps, and that the two revolted armies willmake a truce with each other, in order to be revenged on those bywhom they think that they have been betrayed. Thus it was in1783. At the beginning of that eventful year, North had been therecognised head of the old Tory party, which, though for a momentprostrated by the disastrous issue of the American war, was stilla great power in the state. To him the clergy, the universities,and that large body of country gentlemen whose rallying cry was"Church and King," had long looked up with respect andconfidence. Fox had, on the other hand, been the idol of theWhigs, and of the whole body of Protestant dissenters. Thecoalition at once alienated the most zealous Tories from North,and the most zealous Whigs from Fox. The University of Oxford,which had marked its approbation of North's orthodoxy by electinghim chancellor, the city of London, which had been during two andtwenty years at war with the Court, were equally disgusted. Squires and rectors, who had inherited the principles of thecavaliers of the preceding century, could not forgive their oldleader for combining with disloyal subjects in order to put aforce on the sovereign. The members of the Bill of RightsSociety and of the Reform Associations were enraged by learningthat their favourite orator now called the great champion oftyranny and corruption his noble friend. Two great multitudeswere at once left without any head, and both at once turned theireyes on Pitt. One party saw in him the only man who could rescuethe King; the other saw in him the only man who could purify theParliament. He was supported on one side by Archbishop Markham,the preacher of divine right, and by Jenkinson, the captain ofthe Praetorian band of the King's friends; on the other side byJebb and Priestley, Sawbridge and Cartwright, Jack Wilkes andHorne Tooke. On the benches of the House of Commons, however,the ranks of the ministerial majority were unbroken; and that anystatesman would venture to brave such a majority was thoughtimpossible. No prince of the Hanoverian line had ever, under anyprovocation, ventured to appeal from the representative body tothe constituent body. The ministers, therefore, notwithstandingthe sullen looks and muttered words of displeasure with whichtheir suggestions were received in the closet, notwithstandingthe roar of obloquy which was rising louder and louder every dayfrom every corner of the island, thought themselves secure.

Such was their confidence in their strength that, as soon as theParliament had met, they brought forward a singularly bold andoriginal plan for the government of the British territories inIndia. What was proposed was that the whole authority, whichtill that time had been exercised over those territories by theEast India Company, should be transferred to seven Commissionerswho were to be named by Parliament, and were not to be removableat the pleasure of the Crown. Earl Fitzwilliam, the mostintimate personal friend of Fox, was to be chairman of thisboard; and the eldest son of North was to be one of the members.

As soon as the outlines of the scheme were known, all the hatredwhich the coalition had excited burst forth with an astoundingexplosion. The question which ought undoubtedly to have beenconsidered as paramount to every other was, whether the proposedchange was likely to be beneficial or injurious to the thirtymillions of people who were subject to the Company. But thatquestion cannot be said to have been even seriously discussed. Burke, who, whether right or wrong in the conclusions to which hecame, had at least the merit of looking at the subject in theright point of view, vainly reminded his hearers of that mightypopulation whose daily rice might depend on a vote of the BritishParliament. He spoke, with even more than his wonted power ofthought and language, about the desolation of Rohilcund, aboutthe spoliation of Benares, about the evil policy which hadsuffered the tanks of the Carnatic to go to ruin; but he couldscarcely obtain a hearing. The contending parties, to theirshame it must be said, would listen to none but English topics. Out of doors the cry against the ministry was almost universal. Town and country were united. Corporations exclaimed against theviolation of the charter of the greatest corporation in therealm. Tories and democrats joined in pronouncing the proposedboard an unconstitutional body. It was to consist of Fox'snominees. The effect of his bill was to give, not to the Crown,but to him personally, whether in office or in opposition, anenormous power, a patronage sufficient to counterbalance thepatronage of the Treasury and of the Admiralty, and to decide theelections for fifty boroughs. He knew, it was said, that he washateful alike to King and people; and he had devised a plan whichwould make him independent of both. Some nicknamed him Cromwell,and some Carlo Khan. Wilberforce, with his usual felicity ofexpression, and with very unusual bitterness of feeling,described the scheme as the genuine offspring of the coalition,as marked by the features of both its parents, the corruption ofone and the violence of the other. In spite of all opposition,